The world of music comes to Nyon

Paléo Festival Nyon

The organisers of the Paléo Festival (July 24 - 29) say this year's line-up promises to be explosive. The festival will pay tribute to world music, the French chanson tradition and rock and pop guitars.

Paléo is one of the largest open-air music events in Europe, and is now in its 26th year. It has grown to the extent that this year almost 100 concerts will be held on five different stages dotted around the festival site in Nyon on the Lake Geneva shore.

Two of the big names in British pop, Texas and Pulp, will kick off the festival on July 24. It’ll be the turn of Placebo, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and the Young Gods on July 26.

The organisers say one of the headline acts, Manu Chao, represents all the different traditions at Paléo. The former leader of the popular and outrageous French rock band Mano Negra, his latest album, Clandestino, gives voice to the immigrant in a series of simple and catchy songs. Manu Chao will take the stage on July 29.

A performance the evening before by Henri Salvador, considered a legend of chanson, is expected to be one of the festival highlights. He uses elements of jazz and Brazilian music to create his own sound.

Veteran performers, Black Uhuru and Kool and the Gang will top the bill of Hip-hop, reggae and soul and funk performers.

The organisers have also attracted groups celebrated in their own countries, but little known abroad to the Paléo “World Music” stage. The guests of honour will be a duo from the tiny republic of Tuva, in eastern Asia.

Huun-Huur-Tu and Sainkho Namtchylak are said to keep alive “a secular version of harmonic singing that is descended from an age-old shamanist tradition”.

swissinfo